Freedom From the Known

"Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare - something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state - something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

"Man has always asked the question: what is it all about? Has life any meaning at all? He sees the enormous confusion of life, the brutalities, the revolt, the wars, the endless divisions of religion, ideology and nationality, and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thing we call living, is there anything beyond it?

"And not finding this nameless thing of a thousand names which he has always sought, he has cultivated faith - faith in a saviour or an ideal - and faith invariably breeds violence.

"In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this very easily in ourselves.

"For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, 'Tell me all about it - what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?' and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.

"Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. And that is what millions of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation, going off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave or wandering from village to village with a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds to conform to an established pattern. But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull through discipline and conformity - such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according to its own distortion."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom From the Known

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Open Inquiry

OK. I really like open inquiry. I guess that is pretty clear while reading most of this blog. How the accumlated experiences of humanity affect our views of reality is a fascinating thing for me. And nothing is off the table, because I have found through my experience, and the experiences of those around me, that more often than not, growth produces flowers (quaint, eh?). It is part of nature, which we are a product of. Our brains produce flowers of thought, and thought is a form of art. Thought doesn't need to be always characterized as "true" or "false", but it may very well be so. But to safeguard humanity's collective freedom of thought, we must do all we can to not silence the voices of the "insane", who seem to at best generate tomorrow's fiction, and at worst create tomorrow's cults. Thought is art. Thought needs pure imaginative insanity to grow. With nothing to sift through, we cannot find truth. Neither about how we find our happiness and our place in the world, nor about how the universe is, and world around us and within us works.

With that in mind, I post and respond to two separate questions which I was asked recently. They both fall under the banner of open inquiry. They are valid questions, and I highly respect the minds of those who ask such things. That they all don't have the answers, is pure poetry to me.

1. What if we exist BECAUSE of faith?

Invariably those that ask this question are usually asking it to further YOUR inquiry into THEIR religion, and in America, it is usually christianity. This is indeed a viable question, but it is as viable as the following questions.

"What if we exist because of our past life karmic debt that we still need to pay during this life, and our desire to live once again, in pleasure and pain and not distance ourself by the buddha's middle path?"

"What if we exist because an alien race did experiments and seeded our world with life?"

"What if we exist because of a shared dream we all are dreaming together, thus creating a stable and consistent experience for each of us?"

All my point is with my examples above is that there is no reason to specifically quote jesus, anymore than mohammad, anymore than joseph smith or carlos castaneda. And there is certainly no reason to live one's life any different because by chance you just happened to be raised by parents or in a society which held this belief more dearly than any other faith generated by humans. So what if jesus was right? So what if shiva was right? So what if odin was right? The list goes on and on...

Jesus is but one card in a deck of tens of thousands. Why focus all of your attention there, or see his biblical claim of divinity as more valid or greater than any other? As Richard Dawkins states, "[Every single person] is an atheist when it comes to the countless gods that humanity has ever believed in... Some of us just go one god further."

Last point... sure some questions are just invalid, or just plain meaningless, but just because a question is viable or worth asking for investigation into our humanity and needs, it doesn't mean all answers regarding this question are equally valid.

2. What are we made from?

As science shows us, we are made of the very fabric of past stars. We are certainly nothing less, and there is no reason to believe we are made of something more. Indeed, one day we will return from whence we came (this time to our own sun). It is a glorious thought. Glorious!

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You Are the Truth in Every Moment

although reality is observable, what is observable isn't always reality. as our senses often fool us, just being personally open to observing doesn't help us as individuals understand the innermost workings of the universe which we are a part of.(1) being open to observing as individuals helps us to understand the innermost workings of ourselves. a by-product of this is being "at peace" -- of leaving behind what is useless to us and being able to identify our true natures, and the nature of the truth.

don't be fooled into thinking that truth must not be observable to be truth. this is the lie we hear every moment from our spiritual teachers, from our mystics and from our religions. this is the lie that undoubtably you were raised within. faith.

truth is life, not what one hears about life. you are the truth. every instant. observe it. see it (you) for what it is. not by what others tell you about it. not by the thoughts which you've catalogued and maintained in order to give yourself a self, an identity. leave your identity at the instant, and move into what is. be faithless.

do not live on the words of another. do not be a second-hand person. do not accept spiritual slavery. mental slavery.

observation without exerting influence can help us learn how to act with purpose and intent, and not react out of some other action outside ourself which we observe or take within. if we can give pause, not to thought, not to what is old, we can live each moment like it is, new, like we have died to our last moment, and leave behind the conditioning of our competitive lives.

but do not do this to find fulfillment. that is a lie. that is an end, a goal, and upon achieving this goal, what are we to do with ourselves then? reach for the next goal, indeed. no... do it to be free, and in turn you will give the greatest gift to the world you can. to be new every momement. to not be so quick to judge. to be open to every instant of time. to be timeless.

we can learn this by true meditation, awareness, whether in waking life, or in dreams. specifically dreams offer us the ability, if one is aware one is dreaming (lucid), of working on our reactive behaviors which we are reinforcing daily. tonight's dreams may be able, if you are willing and open, to teach you how to be as new every moment as every part of nature you see around you.

for humanity, let's take this one little step, and shed our conditioning, our religion, our saints, our sins, our notions of what is, to truly observe as a child. krishnamurti called for just this. lennon called for just this. it is soon time that we all should call for just this.

"imagine all the people,
living life in peace...
you may say i'm a dreamer,
but i'm not the only one.
someday you'll join us,
and the world could live as one."

(1) science is our tool, as humans, to help provide a structure to build a collective understanding of our natural observable universe.

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